


now I will ask you to be brave

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pirates, Slow Burn, canon compliant up to 97, revivify, spoilers for 97, the mighty nein - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23171392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: Now that the war is over, Essek Thelyss is the Cerberus Assembly's last loose end. In hindsight, he should've realized they would come for him, but he has always been a fool and a coward.He will certainly need his friends to protect him now.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 34
Kudos: 364





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still hoping that this is the kind of angst Matthew Mercer is willing to give me but in the meantime I'm gonna write it myself. Title is from a tumblr post about life that would not let me go until I titled a fic after it. 
> 
> Will update tags as needed but this is not planned very far; hoping that with more writing time it'll come pretty quickly lol.

It’s his own bureaucratic delays, in the end, that kill him. 

Those loose ends he needed to tie up—mostly his work, and collecting the important things in his towers to stash away in a pocket dimension. If they discover what he’s done, they’ll burn whatever’s left to the ground, once they’ve finished combing it for any evidence of what further damage he may have caused. They won’t find it; he’s always been very efficient at erasing paper trails, or never leaving one in the first place.

And if they never find out, well, then they’ll find the blood, and gods know what they’ll think then.

He doesn’t know how she got inside, the woman with the crooked smile and crooked hair and the crooked burn scar that crawls up her neck from under her severe-looking uniform. The same thing the scourger they’d captured had worn, in fact, though by the time Essek got a look at that individual, the fabric had been bloodied and wrinkled and torn, and only now has he gotten a look at how imposing these scourgers could be.

He can’t imagine Caleb as one of them.

And somehow this is what he thinks, as he turns at the slight noise of her sudden presence, hands already spinning to cast—what Caleb might’ve looked like as a scourger. What he might’ve looked like in this woman’s place, eyes blazing, striking the killing blow against the Cerberus Assembly’s last loose end.

And it is a killing blow—she’s stronger than he is, quicker, and the knife embeds itself into his abdomen the moment before the teleportation spell completes, and as he chokes, crimson blossoming on his robes and streaking the ground beneath his hovering feet with alarming quickness, all breath expunged from his lungs, he thinks of the sun, and the ocean, and friends. It’s such a new sensation that it would’ve taken his breath away had he not lost it all already, the realization that that is his first instinct and his final thought. The tower and the scourger woman vanish. 

He is suddenly on the deck of a ship, the sun burning down onto his head, blinking against the light that sears the image of her into his eyes. Her image flashes in front of her, covering the woman who screams and runs to him as his entire body crumples, the pain only now hitting him like the delay of a sending spell. 

And he almost thinks he’s receiving a sending spell as his ears flood with a frantic, familiar, lilting voice screaming, “ _Essek? Essek?!_ ”

So many times that voice has come to him at odd hours, in the middle of work, occasionally in… uncomfortable positions. But as the searing scream of his dying body rushes up his ribs and spine, he chokes out, blood on his lips and his voice half laugh, half sigh, “Jester, you don’t have time for all of the words.”


	2. a fair trade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: I fully switch up tense depending on who's narrating and how they feel to me. Don't be surprised when tense changes from chapter to chapter haha. (Also, for reference, I'm putting this after TravelerCon—and I can't even begin to imagine what that's gonna be like, so we're just moving past it.)
> 
> Also, I have been screaming about the Wildemount guide for a day. If you know, you know. And if you wanna come scream with me I'm essektheylyss on tumblr.

Jester had been sneaking away from some repairs at the moment Essek arrived on deck, a knife embedded in the space of his ribs, and immediately her boredom with hammering nails into the hull was forgotten as she sprinted to catch him, the light in his pale eyes already fading, and she realized too late her spell components had been left below deck as she scrambled to think of a way to heal him.

This was not an occurrence she’d really been prepared for, not like when people needed healing in battle, the materials close to her fingers and the words quick to rise to her lips, but right now the words were failing her, and his thin body felt heavier than usual as both of them collapsed to the deck, her knees buckling as her mind raced with nothing useful for this situation.

By the time she felt for a pulse, only seconds later, Essek’s dark skin was already cooling, and no movement fluttered beneath her hands—his heart was achingly quiet, veins settling into a horrible weighty stillness.

The sun was so, so bright, too bright through the lens of her tears when she looked up, her own heart pounding, and screamed, “ _Caduceus! Caduceus, Beau, Caleb, someone, I need diamonds!_ ”

Her voice was strangled as she ran through who might have them on their person, might move fast enough to bring her her components in time to wrench him back from the dead.

And Essek Thelyss was, in fact, dead in her arms, his blood already congealing up to her elbows, the hems of her sleeves stained with it. 

Heavy footsteps thudded toward her against the wood and she had to blink away her own tears to see Caleb sink to his knees beside her, the knuckles of one hand ghosting across Essek’s cheek where just a week ago he’d held his head in his hands and promised him redemption. 

“ _Essek,_ ” Caleb breathed, and he looked down at the dagger that had fallen from Essek’s chest to the deck. Jester watched the moment the lines of his face hardened, like he’d been turned to stone, and a shiver ran up her spine. Already on his knees, he leaned down and picked it up by its handle, smudges of blood from Essek’s grasping hands marring the silver. 

It felt like the ship had been caught in a whirlpool, spinning around her, as Yasha fell beside her as well, hands clutching for Essek’s arm like healing might be enough, but he was beyond any power Yasha had at her disposal. 

“ _Caduceus!_ ” she screamed again, and found the firbolg’s pink head poking above the deck, eyes wide with alarm as he dashed up the stairs, a diamond shimmering in his fingers as it caught the light. 

“What happened?” he asked lowly, as he slid to her side, and she shook her head as she pulled the gem from his hand in her terror. Under normal circumstances he might’ve been a little offended, but she’d watched Essek die in front of her, and she needed to be the person to bring him back, if only so she would _know._

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she sobbed, frantic, and took a huge, shuddering breath before resting Essek on his back on the wood, and, with both hands, pressed the diamond to his heart. Eyes closed, she prayed to the Traveler— _he can’t be dead, Traveler. He has so much more to do._

The fey’s chuckle in her ear was enough to calm her own heartbeat, and she felt his hands cover hers as the diamond shattered. “ _But of course, my dear. Death for death is not always a fair trade._ ”

And with one heavy shove of his hands over hers over Essek’s heart, the diamond disintegrated altogether, the magic flowing into his chest, and after a long, tense moment, breath returned, and Essek blinked up at her, skin still dangerously pale. “Jester—“

Without a second thought, Caduceus pressed a hand on his shoulder and murmured a word—some more of the life flushed back into Essek’s face. 

Caleb barely seemed to notice, examining the bloodied blade, but Jester caught his shoulders relax just slightly when Essek pushed himself onto his elbows. “How did you—“

“You’re alright here,” Caduceus said kindly, and smiled down at him. “Take it easy. Whoever was after you—you’re alright here.”

“Are you sure we should’ve done that?”

Essek didn’t look hurt by Beau’s cross question as he caught her eye over Jester’s shoulder—the clerics had to turn to look at her, arms crossed as she leaned on her staff. As casual as her stance was, she could’ve been prepared for a fight, the muscles tensed in her legs like she was ready to spring.

No, when Jester looked back down at Essek, he looked almost like he agreed. “You have used very expensive spell components to revive me,” he murmured. “I was not sure that I was worth it to you.”

Jester blinked, then looked between him and Beau. The daggers in her glare were as sharp as the one that had killed him, and he accepted them calmly. “Of course you’re _worth it,_ Essek, don’t be stupid.”

“Someone wanted you dead,” Beau said calmly. “Maybe we should’ve let them have what they wanted.”

It was strange, Jester thought, watching one person threaten another and the second take every word as truth.

“No,” Caleb growled, and for the first time, all eyes found him. “I know this blade. This is Astrid’s blade. If the Cerberus Assembly sent… sent a very high-level scourger to kill him—“

“Then it is better for them that he’s dead than alive,” Caduceus finished, and Caleb nodded, finding Beau’s eyes with a cold stare that she returned, albeit with slightly more apprehension than before.

“No, Captain, I’ll protect you!” Veth’s voice echoed up the stairwell, as she shoved herself onto the deck ahead of Fjord, brandishing her crossbow, as Fjord arrived behind her, glowering. He scanned the deck to find the rest of them surrounding the drow, who had to shield his eyes against the sun to make out Fjord’s outline. 

“Well that was certainly quite a commotion just for Essek,” Fjord commented as he relaxed, and the blade that had been in his hand shimmered out of existence. 

“Well… Essek is alive now. He wasn’t alive a minute ago,” Jester pointed out, and understanding seemed to catch on their captain’s face as he found the darker stains against Essek’s already dark robes. 

“And he is being targeted by the Cerberus Assembly for assassination, it would seem,” Caleb drawled, and from his voice it was already clear that he was spinning inward. Jester reached out a hand to squeeze his wrist, to hold him there if she could, and he gave her a small smile of gratitude before turning his gaze back to the deck. 

“Which means he’s of value to them,” Beau continued, and looked down at Essek once again. “Could you prove it? Could you prove they’ve had the beacons the whole time? Like to the king or something?”

“Well, maybe,” Essek said slowly, eyes darting between them all. “Though I don’t think that would be wise. If either King Dwendal or the Bright Queen found out… the conflict would start up again, likely immediately. What tenuous peace you have brokered would be gone in an instant.”

It was strange, Jester thought, how he seemed more nervous when he was being offered life than death.

“Well clearly they think you might let something slip, if not tell them outright,” Beau replied.

“Then they think me a fool or suicidal,” Essek shrugged, and pressed himself at least up to a sitting position, and rested his elbows heavily on his knees. His movement was still labored, and Jester caught his hand to heal him some more. As the energy washed over him, he smiled thankfully, head bowed. “Or perhaps Ludinus saw the… care that I expressed for you, and thought I’d gone soft.”

“Have you?” Beau asked, and Jester winced at the harshness of the words.

“Perhaps,” Essek said. Nothing the monk said seemed to faze him, and Jester was glad—if he’d teleported away again, she was going to message him until he agreed to come back. Whoever might’ve been after him, he was much safer here than he was anywhere else. “Perhaps I am a fool.”

“I don’t think you’re a fool, Essek,” she said brightly, plastering a smile on her face, and he smiled back at her, a little forced, accepting a gift he didn’t feel he deserved. 

“Caring for someone is only a weakness insofar as weak people try to exploit it,” Caduceus said, and no one spoke for a moment as they digested what he’d said. 

“You cannot go back to your home tonight,” Caleb said finally, and set the dagger gingerly on the deck. 

“I think returning to Rosohna at all would, in fact, be foolish,” Essek agreed. The sun beat down on his white hair, and Jester sighed.

“Essek, you should’ve brought your parasol,” she said, and heard Caleb choke back a laugh. “I’m going to have to make you a new one.”

“I’ll be just fine,” Essek said softly, and found the weapon where Caleb had left it. “The sun will never hurt me worse than a knife.”


	3. razor edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't really sure when I started writing this but... this is gonna be a slooooow burn, y'all.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe right now—the world is scary, but it's good to still have stories to tell.

However Essek had assumed they’d made camp while they were not at the house he himself had procured for them, to keep an eye on them, to make sure they didn’t get too close to him— _he would never have believed that he was the one who would get too close_ —this was absolutely not it.

Even on the sea, with the oversight of at least three different gods—or, well, three gods and a fey being, according to what they explained about the bizarre gathering they had just left—Caleb stretches the silver wire across the space of the cabin where they gather pillows and blankets and bedrolls. After minutes of incantations that Essek has never even thought to need, the wire glows a little brighter then dims into a comfortable shimmer of light, and Caleb settles again in the center of the circle as the rest of the group moves around him, readying for bed.

Essek, well, _hovers_ , awkward at the side of the group, before Jester nudges his elbow. “I found a pillow and blanket for you!”

The pillow she hands him is threadbare and the blanket is rough, made to last against the salt of the sea, but it’s more than he deserves, even as sore as his body still is and how his chest aches where the knife pierced it. 

The knife has been gingerly placed in the captain’s quarters, along with an odd, vaguely half-orcian bust tucked into the large bed, but he still imagines he can feel the razor sharp tip of it, as soft and violent as Veth’s uncertain eyes, as prickly on his skin as Caduceus’ knowing gaze. 

“Thank you,” he says, with the slightest smile, and before he can move to lay them down, Jester stands on her tiptoes and presses a tiny kiss to the sharp bone of his cheek, and he thinks that everything about him is a weapon. He freezes at the touch as she lays a hand on his arm. 

“We’re glad to have you here, Essek,” she says softly, and he’s grateful for the dark shade of his skin, because his face burns with—not embarrassment, really. No, something more akin to shame, if that was a thing he was familiar with.

It’s certainly something he’s learning, these days, and he thinks it might be strong enough that it’s noticeable on his face. Instead of pulling away, she wraps her arms around him. “I’m glad to have you here. And I’m… I’m very glad you’re alive.”

“Only thanks to you,” he manages. “I’m glad to be alive.”

“If you come back when you die,” she continues, and his face burns a little more, “why did you think to come here? You’d have died for sure out here.”

The smile is tighter now, and he exhales, shaking as he thinks of how close of a call his death had been. _Now I can say I know what dying feels like, Mother. But perhaps you would not say the same about living._ “I think I, ah, panicked,” he says, and pats her arm gently, though it feels awkward coming from him. Everything about him is a weapon, a danger to those who accept it into their hands. He is not made for comfort. “Dying is painful, as I presume you know.” 

“Oh, no, no, no, I’ve never died,” she says quickly, shaking her head, and he wonders how he ever thought he had a chance against her charm, how he thought he’d built up his cold exterior enough to keep a layer of ice between himself and all of the tricks up her sleeve. Then again, her blue skin likes the cold.

“Ah, I just assumed, you—“ he shakes his head, thinking of the icy mountain he’d once left them on. “You all put yourself into much danger.”

“I think you’ve found yourself in just as trouble as we get up to,” she says, with a conspiratorial wink that he has no response to. He can still feel the steel in his chest, the way his soul had poured out of him like blood. And she’d just returned it, as simple as anything.

It was far beyond the reaches of any magic he knows. 

All of his knowledge, a century spent building up magic and curating spell books, and he doesn’t know a single spell that can shove the life back into a person’s chest.

She pats his arm yet again as a flicker of light expands from Caleb, in the center of the barracks where they’ve bunked, and a dome grows from the light, obscuring everyone who’d been inside.

It’s a simple enough spell, one he’d almost forgotten he’d learned once, so simple it shocks him that this was their protection. The armaments of schoolchildren, and yet—

He knows that this is a spell that will not permit him to enter, if he has not been designated as a person to trust. And although he has been invited verbally, he still isn’t sure if Caleb trusts him. 

He would not trust him, in Caleb’s position. And Caleb is… he’s smart, yes. And he is far wiser than Essek. And by now, knowing what damage his hands have done, Essek is not even sure that he does trust himself.

Nothing but a weapon, his hands are. Something built for war.

Jester waves him inside as she passes through the barrier, but he holds his breathe as he steps—steps—into the dome. 

Inside, Jester is already laying down her blanket between Beau and Fjord, and both of their faces have softened as she chirps away at them, chatter so quick he doesn’t try to follow anymore. Yasha blinks at him with heavy eyes where she settles beside Caduceus, closest to the door, a physical barrier that he nods at and ducks around with his head down. 

Across, Veth is bickering with Fjord as she finds a comfortable spot next to—

Caleb. And the only open space on the floor.

He sets his bedding uneasily in the space as the rest more of less settle, too used to this setup to register his uncertainty, and start trading watches for the evening. 

“Okay, I’ll take first watch,” Beau says, looking around expectantly, and Fjord rolls his eyes as he waves a hand. 

“I’ll join you,” he says, and sits up from where he’d looked very comfortable wrapped in a blanket.

“You wake me up when you get tired,” Caduceus waves, his head barely visible above his own bedroll, oversized and built for him. His hand flutters, and he rolls over, eyes already closed. “I can take second watch.”

“I can join you,” Jester says brightly.

Essek swallows hard as he looks around as they think for a second, before offering, “You take three watches, yes? I can take the last one.”

Beau raises an eyebrow. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

Though it’s largely the reaction he was expecting, and it’s the mistrust he knows he deserves, it stings a little, as much as every word stings—like something he has to take. A punishment he’s accepted, that he will accept again and again until he thinks maybe he has somehow proven otherwise. 

It will be a long, long time before he feels as though he might have any weight in this group of people to deny whatever atonement they wish to mete out.

“It’s the least I can do. I need, I believe, far less rest than you do. I did not presume to take it alone, assuming someone had planned to join me.”

Even the rush of the ocean beyond the hull seems to silence for a moment as they look at each other in this dim dome Caleb has constructed. A barrier between them and the rest of the world, and him along with them. He certainly feels as though he has become caught in their current, dragged along whether he wishes to be there or not. 

“Ja, I will join,” Caleb says, and pulls his blanket over him, his back to the group. Even Veth, lying at his back, looks a bit off put at his sudden shift. He’s still wearing his coat, and she has to ease it off his shoulders as the rest of them settle into sleep. 

Essek has to blink his eyes away from Caleb’s shoulders, the red hair that falls across his neck as he shifts into the rough blanket Jester had given him, and he’s not sure whether it’s how tired he is, after returning from the brink of death, or the safety of this group, or just the temperature control of the dome, but he thinks that it’s the warmest thing he has ever slept beneath.

He dreams, though, of death. 

Like walking along a razor edge, he tiptoes further into… something akin to the grey sky of the beacon’s call, pinpricks of light racing past him with every movement. It is not unpleasant here—no cold sets in, as he had imagined when his hands gripped the metal of the weapon that had so thoroughly opened his chest. A bird cries out, a shift of unseen wings overhead, before a handsome raven lands on his shoulder. Its claws grip into his skin, and he hisses at the pressure and the pain, before it alights again and ascends, dizzying, among the darkened sky. It isn’t really sky, he knows—if it was, he would be in its center, and what center is there to the sky—but it is certainly going up.

And just like that, he is going down, falling, falling, falling, and he thinks deliriously that the pull of death is a climb, that returning is the part that involves letting gravity do the work. 

Delirium is certainly what is pulling him now, dragging him back like a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and he has never felt so small as he does now. He thinks that trying to stay off the ground has only ever brought him closer to this brink, that defying gravity has only ever edged him closer to the dead. That perhaps his feet on the ground is a mark of living after all.


	4. last request

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an update! what a concept.

When Jester shakes him out of his trance for his watch, he’s gasping for breath, with the strangest feeling that he’s been falling for a very, very long time. When she pulls her hand away, he reaches for her fingers, and though her eyes are tired and lidded, she gives him a smile and squeezes his hand, cementing him here, for a moment.

Wordlessly, he nods a thanks, not trusting his throat. It will only betray his fear.

Of everyone here, though, she would likely be most understanding of his fear, of the terror that death will find him no matter how far he runs and the suspicion that he will deserve its grasp no matter how long it takes to catch up. 

But she’s already curling into her sleeping roll, back pressed against Beau’s for warmth, and he swallows down anything he might’ve expressed. It seems she has slipped into sleep so easily, and he envies her for it, but then, she deserves nothing less.

Caleb stretches a few feet away as he turns to him, and for a long time neither of them speak.

It may as well be noon in this dome, since his eyes can pick out the details with clarity that he knows Caleb cannot. It is almost a comfort to know that he is not the blind one here, for once. 

Caleb pulls off the necklace of amber he’s taken to wearing recently and spreads it on the ground in a circle, and murmurs a word under his breath that Essek can’t make out. His spellbook appears on the ground, and he picks it up to flip through it with one hand, already familiarizing himself with tomorrow’s spells as he collects the necklace and slips it over his head again with the other.

“That is a very neat trick,” Essek says, and he isn’t sure if Caleb interprets that as appreciatively as he’d meant it, because his eyes flash a bit in the light. Essek wonders briefly if Caleb realizes how well he can see right now, and suddenly feels as though looking at him is an intrusion.

Suddenly, Essek is back in his tower, spying on them for the Bright Queen, for the safety of his scheme, for himself. And he feels like he would crawl out of his skin and shed it for something cleaner, if it would make him feel less guilty, but this is the only skin he gets. It is the only one of which he is worthy.

Caleb nods. “It is perhaps less convenient than being able to snap a book in and out, but it works to protect the things I— protect my things like I wish I could’ve protected others, in the past.”

Essek doesn’t ask what that means. His gaze on Caleb’s face, with his eyes squinting against the dim light, already makes him want to avert his eyes.

What good is seeing someone, if they cannot see you in return?

He wants to lean back on something, but the problem with the dome is that there simply is nothing on which to lean. The discomfort of security, he thinks, and laughs through his nose. Caleb looks up from where his fingers trace lines over the dried ink of his spells, transcribed in his scrawling handwriting that Essek has watched him spill over these pages, and blinks. “What is so funny?”

“Nothing, I just… Leomund’s tiny hut. It’s not a particularly comfortable way to protect oneself. But protection is not comfortable, is it?”

“No, I suppose not,” Caleb smiles wryly before returning to his pages, and Essek is more disarmed by that smile than he would like to admit. 

After a time, Caduceus’ breathing settles into a dull thunder of a snore to match Yasha’s, and Essek leans back on his elbows, trying to find some comfortable way to sit. If he was bolder, he would crawl to Caleb and lean against his shoulder, but that feels like a line he cannot cross tonight. By the time Caleb closes his book, he is practically squirming with nervousness, and Caleb almost laughs to watch him adjust his posture again within less than a minute. 

“You are not used to sitting still,” he says, and Essek shakes his head.

“I am perfectly accustomed to sitting still. In a chair, in my study.”

“Yes, we don’t really have those here. Chairs. Very dangerous.”

It feels like a joke with a punchline that Essek isn’t privy to, and he can almost feel the sting in his heart where the dagger hit. Perhaps yesterday’s Essek Thelyss, who had not tasted death so acutely, would not have been so affected by an inside joke. 

“Who was that woman?”

“The one who killed you?” Caleb asks flatly, and he nods, mute. It’s hard to say that kind of thing out loud, but he doesn’t mind it when Caleb says it. It feels like a bygone in his mouth, something that can be dismissed. Yesterday’s news.

“Yes.”

“She was… one of the others who was chosen for the scourger program, with me, from my town. She was very bright. Very sharp. And very, very dangerous.” He stares listlessly into the wooden ceiling, and Essek imagines he can see the stars. “I trained with her, and another friend of ours. We were…”

Essek can hear what he is thinking in his tone of voice, but he can’t bring himself to finish the sentence before Caleb does.

“I loved her,” Caleb says, finally, simply. “I loved her very much, once. But now…”

“She is a different person?”

“No, no. She is still the same. I am a different person, now. I have changed, and she has not changed with me. I don’t think… I don’t think she could, now.”

Essek wants to point out that the people in this room have begun to change him, that perhaps there is hope for the woman who, hours ago, sank a dagger into his ribs in the hopes of him bleeding out on the floor of his own tower. But that feels too much like pleading with Caleb to acknowledge the ways in which he is changed, and he will not do that. He will allow them to evaluate him on their own. 

He has a feeling that is the only way he earns any kind of forgiveness or trust here. 

“No, no, I…” he looks around at his friends, surrounding him on the ground, the rise and fall of their chests and the gentle and not-so-gentle snoring that means they are all asleep, and says, “I went to speak with her, after your queen’s attack on Rexxentrum.” Essek doesn’t point out that, in terms of pure allegiance, Leylas Kryn is far more their queen than she is his. He pushed her to begin a war, and they urged her to end it, brought her the means to do so. “She has committed far too much to her path to let it go now.”

Essek wonders if Caleb realizes just how much he has touched on Essek’s reluctance to fully cut his ties in Rosohna, all of the ways he dragged his feet making arrangements to put this behind him. Because what he has described in this woman who succeeded in killing him with one blow was the impulse that had gotten Essek killed.

He is too selfish of a creature to reassure Caleb that Astrid may still not be a lost cause, even if it is something he is thinking, perhaps too generously. But it is a generosity they have modeled for him, and he cannot help but mirror it.

That’s what he is now, after all. Little more than a mirror of them, trying to reflect their light when he has none to give.

Caleb leans forward and squints harder at him. “There is blood, in your hair.”

Essek runs a hand through his hair, feeling the sides for anything, and he finds it, along the back of the right side, up into the crown where it has congealed into the longer white strands there. “Ah, I suppose there is.” He fumbles at it—it has dried enough to be pried out, but anytime he tries it tugs until he hisses at the pain.

“Come here,” Caleb says sharply, and Essek blinks at him. “Sit here. Let me get it for you.”

So Essek moves, less gracefully than he would like, to sit crosslegged in front of Caleb, back to him, at his mercy.

Isn’t that always the case.

Thin fingers pry at his hair, but when he hisses again, the touch softens, starting to work it from where it has tangled. When Caleb’s fingertips ghost over his scalp, he shivers, and Caleb hums. “This is very stuck. Give me a few minutes.”

Essek is more than willing to do that, sitting as still as he can, in part so that any sharp movements do not rip his hair out, in part because he doesn’t trust his own limbs. Caleb’s hands work gently through the area, starting at the nape of his neck, pulling out flecks of dried blood. Even after he has removed it from an area, he pulls at the hair with soft motions, to make sure nothing has been missed, and it shouldn’t astound Essek quite as much as it does how thorough Caleb is when he takes the time to care about someone.

With the thought of his own blood on his mind, as the clumps of it make up a small pile beside them, his fingers press at the tender skin stitched together by the clerics’ warm magic, like a bruise where the pain lingers. He cannot help but revisit it with his touch, and he thinks about what might happen if he were to return to his home now. Much of his library is tucked away in a pocket dimension so he can pull them out later, take them wherever he goes, but there is plenty more in his home that he will miss, other books he deemed less important and various knick knacks that he has kept out of little more than the appearance of sentimentality. Strange, how having them pulled away makes their nostalgia so much more tangible to him.

There is plenty of danger awaiting him in Rosohna, and he wishes that it was not something he had brought upon himself. It is hard to plead your own case when you feel guilty. 

“Caleb,” he says slowly, shivering again when Caleb’s fingers brush against his scalp. He does not speak for a moment, recovering from this touch, but finally says, “I have no right to ask this of you, I know, but… if I were to be executed by the Dynasty—“

Caleb stops, and though Essek can’t see his face, he can imagine the surprise, the anger in his eyes. “Tell me you are not planning to turn yourself in.”

“No, no,” Essek assures him quickly, and peers at his hands. They are weapons, his hands, just like his words and his bones. He wonders what the Dynasty would do with his body once they have disposed of his soul. “But I think, if they were to find me, drag me back to face justice… I cannot face death at the orders of the Assembly, knowing everything they have done. It does not feel like a justice. But the Dynasty… I don’t think I could defend myself in that throne room.”

“Then will you allow us to defend you instead?”

“No, no. If it came to that… I would accept the punishment as it is meted. And the only punishment for treason is death.”

“And what would you ask of me?”

Essek shifts as Caleb’s hands pull away, and he can’t tell if the blood in his hair is gone, or if Caleb has stopped working at it. He doesn’t care too much—he needs to look Caleb in the face when he asks this. His voice is soft enough that he doesn’t know if anyone else in the dome, as close as they are, would hear his request, even if any of them were awake. “In the Dynasty, I am allowed one last request, and that is my executioner. Would you—“

“No.” Caleb’s rage burns white-hot on his face, even though he barely reacts to the unfinished question. Essek ducks his head, nodding.

“I understand. I just… while I could not defend myself, I do not like the idea of being executed under their version of justice. The blind devotion to the luxon—I have already told you that it has never sat well with me. There is no room for questioning. I cannot blame them for my actions, but I can trace back the views that led me to the decisions I made.”

“If you were to be executed, you would return, no?”

“No. No, ah, they would march me far out of range of a beacon before I was killed.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

Caleb tries to reorganize his face into something resembling humor, and doesn’t quite reach it. “Well, I would bet that Beauregard would do it.”

“Hmph. I think Beauregard would make it hurt.”

“She has more mercy in her than that.” 

Essek looks at the monk, asleep between Fjord and Jester. He thinks Caleb is likely right about that, and sighs.

“Enough of this. This is not a request I will grant, because we will not allow it to come to that.” He finds Essek’s gaze, and Essek wonders if Caleb can indeed see him in the dark after all. “We have already said we will protect you, and that is a promise.”

Essek smiles weakly. “That is not a promise you can keep with certainty, Caleb Widogast.”

“It is a promise I can make. Do not take my promises so lightly, Essek Thelyss. Now let me finish this.” He presses gently against Essek’s shoulder blade, twisting him back so that his back is to Caleb yet again, and Essek realizes just how close they have been through this conversation. He shivers as Caleb’s hands return to his hair, for reasons that have less to do with his fingers and more to do with the way his knees press into the sides of Essek’s hips.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think!


End file.
